The Issue

Nearly every company or organization is doing something with voice over IP today, ranging from evaluations to full adoptions. A continued area of interest among IT executives is total cost of ownership. Until 2005, organizations that implemented VOIP did so because of a real or perceived cost savings over traditional telephony. In many cases, they found substantial savings by eliminating costly third-party contracts for Moves, Adds and Changes (MACs), reducing the amount of cabling required in new buildings, or leveraging idle capacity in their data networks.

But for the past two years, cost has been a secondary driver to “futureproofing” the network. Rarely do we find IT executives who can justify investing in TDM technology when their PBXs must be replaced. They see IP as the platform for the future, and they want to be prepared for new applications— starting with voice—with a converged infrastructure.

The focus on cost has shifted from proving VOIP’s numbers vs. TDM’s numbers to comparisons between vendors. It’s no longer a matter of “if” a company goes to VOIP, it’s when. And when that time comes, they want to understand the different cost components of VOIP—and how key vendors compare with one another.

Nemertes has been tracking VOIP costs for four years and interviewed nearly 400 organizations of all sizes during that time. We will review 2007 trends in VOIP adoption and architecture and associated costs based on this extensive research. For actual costs, we will focus specifically on organizations with more than 1,000 end units on their VOIP systems.

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Clients: Nemertes Issue Paper: VOIP Business Case

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